Angel
by Thethuthinnang
Summary: BtVS.Sin City. She drifts on the wind like a ghost.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Sin City belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and Frank Miller.

She drifts on the wind like a ghost.

I don't know how long she's been there. She's quiet. Quieter than anything or anyone. I step out onto the ice-crusted pavement with Kimberly clutching at my neck for her scrawny life and the snow blowing in my face and there she is. Standing there, a scrap of sleet-rimed blonde hair and a slick black coat.

That's a damn fine coat.

She's small. Tiny. I could put her in my pocket. Gladys probably weighs more dry than this kitten does soaked. I think at first that she's another kid, a stray, maybe, and new at it, too, to be hanging around here at a time of night when even the drunks know to be inside, somewhere, anywhere, out of the way of the bigger, meaner things that walk the streets. Beat cops don't stay out this late, not this close to the Projects. Not in this city.

Then she moves, just a bit, shifting her weight from foot to foot, and she's no kid.

I catch a glimpse of her face, through the gusting snow.

A glimpse of Heaven. Or maybe Hell.

I don't know. I get confused sometimes.

But it sure as hell wasn't anything born on this piece of earthly dirt.

Big green eyes, eyes a man could drown in, could die in. They grab at me, those eyes, bigger and greener than life or anything else against the concrete and the dark and the snow, and I stop dead where I am, the open door and the light to my back. Kimberly sighs in her sleep, exhausted.

She stands there, looking at me. I stand there, watching her looking at me.

Not a kid. Not Old Town, either, not this girl. She's wearing too much to be Old Town, even in a freak blizzard like this one. Only other things out this late in this city are armed or nuts. She doesn't look like she could pick up a gun, much less aim it.

Crazy, then.

Maybe.

Kimberly whimpers. I swear I don't look away, my eyeballs barely flinch, just instinct to make sure the kid's OK, and when I look back, there's nothing there.

The snow turns the city and the dark into a flurry of white and ice and Kimberly and I are alone.

I wait another second, trying to decide if she was real or just me not taking my medicine regular enough. But Kimberly's getting to shivering and I figure it doesn't matter either way. I start walking. Kimberly's got her momma waiting on her.

Except then, when I pass the place where she was standing, all big black coat and big green eyes in a small blonde package, I catch it, that smell, that short-lived, fading smell, the hint of her skin and hair that I get before the snow washes it all away, and my guts go cold even as other, dumber parts of me go hot.

That smell. Hers.

Like angels ought to smell.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Sin City belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and Frank Miller.

A couple of nights later, she comes again.

I could wish she'd picked another time. My mitts are still wet and dripping from where I helped a few lowlifes rethink their outlooks on life back at the bar and it's late enough that I haven't walked off the buzz. It's an hour to dawn and I'm looking for somewhere to take my medicine and flop for the day. It's stopped snowing but the pavement's still chunks of ice in places and the wind is like a knife in my back. This coat's seen better days, just like the chump wearing it.

I'm thinking I could use another drink when I smell it again, through even the cold and the stink of the city and the blood on my hands and the booze on my face.

That smell. That angel smell.

And there she is. Green Eyes.

She comes walking out of an alley like some highbrow dame out for a stroll. The same black coat, the same blonde hair, and her greener than life eyes lowered as if she's thinking about things too deep for her to bother with anything less than the Second Coming.

She's here.

It wasn't the meds. It wasn't me being me.

She's real.

My feet hit the brakes all on their own, and I'm standing there gawking like the dumb lug I am, staring at this girl picking her way through the trash. She's closer than she was before, coming closer, and all I can think is how small she is, how tiny. I bet I could pick her up and slip her under my coat and walk off, and no one would know.

My fingers twitch.

I didn't think I was the stealing type. If I take something, it's usually because I've killed whoever owned it before, and I think that's pretty fair. You keep what you kill. It's damn near a law.

I wonder who I'd have to kill to keep her.

She gets close, close enough that I could touch her if I wanted to, and my head is full of her, her angel smell. She stops in front of me, her hands in her coat pockets, and looks up.

She has to crane her tiny neck to look up at me, has to lean her tiny head so far back I worry for her tiny bones. It's dark, most of the streetlights don't work in this part of town, but I can see her face as if there was a light shining under her skin, and I don't think I've ever seen anything more important than the shape of her lips.

Not Old Town. Never Old Town. I think of some jerk's filthy hands on her and I can feel the rage in me, can feel it snarling and seething, and I could kill the next bastard I see.

She's looking at me.

She's looking at me the way no other woman ever looks at me.

I'd do just about anything to get her to keep looking at me like that. I wouldn't mind telling her, either, except I think my mouth forgot how to work.

So instead I stand there like a jackass until her eyes lower, her head goes down, and she slips around me like a ghost. Her hair brushes my sleeve and my arm goes numb like it's been shot.

By the time I look around, half-afraid she'll be standing there laughing at me, she's gone and the first light is coming into the haze that passes for a sky around here, the gray before morning in Sin City.

I touch the cross around my neck, remembering what the sisters used to tell us about God on His throne surrounded by His angels, and I wonder.

She has scars on her neck.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Sin City belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and Frank Miller.

I don't see her for days.

They're the worst days of my already sorry life. Even my medicine doesn't help anything. Every night's a dirty fight after a dirty fight and every day I lay sprawled in some two-bit hole somewhere even the fleas won't bother with. I drink until I'm broke and then I go looking for a few bad eggs to crack open onto the sidewalk until I can pay for the next round. When the streets are cleaner than they've been in years, to where the cops have even less to do than usual, I head to Kadie's and sit watching Nancy until the last shift is over and my eyes are watering booze.

I get so desperate I even give Old Town a going-over. Not to make trouble—I got nothing against dames making a living. I ask the working girls if they've ever seen this kitten, all big green eyes and golden hair, big black coat, probably homeless, probably new to the life. I ask them if they've ever even heard of anybody who sounds like her.

They shrug, shake their heads, and give me that look. Most dames look at me like that. Like they might at a starving dog they feel sorry for. I don't mind much anymore. It's better than when they used to look at me, like a rabid dog they thought was going to bite.

Green Eyes. You got no business being on the streets, Green Eyes. They'll swallow you whole. They'll spit out your bones.

I think mostly about the why. Why me, Green Eyes? What did you need that you thought I could give you? Were you in trouble? Were you hoping I'd ask, hoping I'd help you out? I would have, Green Eyes, I would have. What I could do I would have done. Still would.

It got stuck in my throat, is all. A doll like you with a face like yours walks up to a jerk like me with a mug like mine and I just dried up. For the first time in my life I couldn't get my jaw working.

I keep looking for her, down alleys and around corners, in doorways and in boxes, in garbage heaps. I don't know if I'm expecting to find her or a body, but I look. I can't get her smell out of my nose, her angel smell, and every time I turn around I see her in crazy places—in bits of light shining through windows, in a shard of green glass grinding under my boot. A black coat and a mop of blonde goes running by and I grab a bony arm, scare ten years out of a hollow-eyed brat trying to get away with somebody's wallet.

I don't know what I'm going to do if—when—I find her. Get her off the streets, maybe. Fix her problem so she can go home—she's probably got people waiting, a girl like her. All I know for sure is that she's got no business wandering the city at night, looking like she does. Eyes like that don't belong here in the gutter, where she can run into lugs like me in the dark.

I haven't been confused for days. Since I saw her, since she stood in front of me and looked at me like she wanted me to take her hand. Take her hand and tell her something stupid, like Everything's going to be all right. Something dumb, like I've got you, there's nothing to be afraid of now.

I wish to God I had.

Except there was no fear in those eyes. None. Looking straight at me, face and blood and booze and all, and she never flinched, never hesitated, looking at me like she knew I'd bite off my own fingers before I laid a mean hand on her.

Like she knew me.

I look and I look and I look. A whole lot of nothing is what I find, and then I almost wish I really was nuts, because then I wouldn't have to spend all my time thinking about how bad I want to even just see her again, just once, and then I'll die happy, God the Father, I swear I will.

I haven't prayed since school and Sister Gladys, but I pray now, just one, just a small one, not asking too much, I think.

I pray.

I pray. I pray like I never prayed, not in school or in the war or after.

I say to God that I never asked Him for nothing, and if I was ever good for anything, He'd let me have this one. Just this one.

And it's her who finds me.


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Sin City belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and Frank Miller.

She's bleeding from the mouth, the nose, and an ear. The left eye is black and swollen shut. Her hair clings to her face, wet through with blood, and the choppy way her breath hitches in and out tells me at least a few of her ribs are cracked, if they aren't broken.

I stay quiet. I stay still. I'd stop breathing if I could.

She fixes her good eye on me, greener than life. I can't tell if she wants to cry or scream.

She's wearing that coat, that slick black coat. I can't see if she's hurt anywhere else—can't see if there's anywhere she isn't hurt. When I hold out my hands, she limps to me, each stiff, shaking step full of agony and glass-eyed shock, and when her knees buckle, when her legs go out from under her, when I catch her, the first time I hear her voice is when she gasps through her bloody teeth.

She smells like angels ought to smell.

I'm going to kill somebody for this.


End file.
